


names for days.

by Pitseleh



Category: Doctrine of Labyrinths - Sarah Monette
Genre: Blood, Cultural Differences, Gen, POV First Person, Post-Series, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-15
Updated: 2013-11-15
Packaged: 2018-01-01 16:31:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,276
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1046056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pitseleh/pseuds/Pitseleh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>While we walked through the dead quiet streets of Grimglass toward the outer slums where all the Kers was stacked like little Saint Cranach dolls, I asked her a question. "Who was trying to break your nose?"</p><p>Ajran frowned, and then worked something out in her head, and nodded. "Oh, some little boys," she looked kinda bored of the whole thing, but she still said boys like it was an insult, which I guess it was. Kers were a fancy word that meant the women made all the decisions. "They think I am a very easy... very easy mark." So she'd definitely picked up some talk from me.</p><p>--This is an old writing exercise to see how well I can integrate an original female character, and lots of worldbuilding, into a preexisting setting with preexisting rules. You can tell me how well I did, or didn't, do.</p>
            </blockquote>





	names for days.

The thing you got to know about Grimglass is two kinds of folks lived there, and most folk only liked one of 'em. There'd been a war-- a _different_ war-- on an island off the coast about five years back, and refugees had got in their boats and landed in the nearest port, guided by that damn lighthouse. The island was called Ker, and the people called themselves Kers, which sounded a lot like 'curse' in Kay's accent and that seriously didn't help things along. He tried, though. I think Kay never quite forgot he was a soldier.

Kay was okay with the Kers, and I was too, and sometimes I think we were the only ones in town. Felix sure as hell didn't want nothing to do with 'em, mostly on account of them... well, I don't wanna say _all_ of 'em was dirty and poor, but a lot of 'em was. I think it reminded Felix too much of the Lower City, and he always got skittish around that.

But Kay was really in charge instead of just pretending to be, so Kay had to get on outta his wife's mansion if any of the Kers got a problem. Which, what with them being dirty and poor and afraid of folks with swords, they didn't always want to bother with going through the main gates at all hours. Which meant they'd tried to come to Felix at first, and as some kinda joke, Felix'd started sending them to me. The whole thing'd stuck like a bad nickname.

But I told you that whole story so I could tell you this one, which mostly has to do with me being woke up before the sun by a girl in my window. I'd had a few dreams that started that way, but Ajran wasn't really a dream sort of girl.

She had her hand on her face and she was poking me real careful with her foot to wake me up, which made sense, since once she'd woke me up all quick, and I'd punched her in the mouth on accident. Seemed like somebody'd already done that today, what with how the hand on her nose was all brown with dried blood. She moved it, now, and from the moonlight streaming in behind her I could see the stain of blood on her lip. She was... one of Felix's flashie words, I think it was _grimace_? She was doing that.

When she was sure I was awake, she said with her deep voice, "Mildmay." 

And I said, dead clever, "what?"

"Tejoran is having his baby," she said, meaning a Ker who'd been pregnant for about as long as you have to be to squirt one out. Thing was, something about Kers or whatever, I didn't understand it, but Tejoran, who sure as hell looked like a woman to me, was called a man by everybody, and when I'd tried to ask about it, Ajran had just looked at me like I'd grown another head.

Anyway, I wasn't gonna go back to sleep now, but hell did I want to. Ajran just kept looking at me like she was expecting something, and finally, I said, "so?" 

Ajran clicked her teeth in the way Kers do when they think you're being an idiot. It made Felix angry, and it just made me feel, well, like an idiot. But Felix wasn't here, I was, and I didn't wanna send Ajran away. She said, "You need an... _official community representative_ to _officiate_ the- the naming." She spoke real slow and careful, so her accent didn't muck up them big words.

I was starting to get it. I got outta bed and went round to find some proper clothes-- Kers didn't give a fuck if you was naked, actually, I was pretty sure Ajran'd walk around in a bedsheet if she could get away with it, but nowdays most Kers just wore shittier versions of the dresses and waistcoats everybody in Grimglass did. In Grimglass, you could get arrested for 'public indecency'. Ajran had once, before I'd shown up here, at least, so I'd been told.

No use thinking about that. I got up, and as for me, not being a Ker and all, I still got dressed behind one of Vanessa's flashie panels. Ajran'd watch, otherwise, which creeped me the fuck out, because she had those big owl eyes like all the Kers did.

"Ain't you official community representative?" I had to speak all slow and careful, too, on account of, well, you probably know already if you got this far.

Ajran clicked again, and when I came out from behind the panel, she had her feet on my bed, still sitting in the windowsill. Her feet were dirty, but so was my bed. 

"You ain't official enough, huh?" I knew the answer already. Kers didn't have no representatives in Grimglass, the closest they got was sending somebody to whine to me or Kay, and mostly to me if it wasn't too important. Ajran'd started being the person sent the most, which the sense that I got wasn't exactly because she was popular. I hadn't asked, though.

"No," she said, looking at her dirty feet. Some Kers didn't wear shoes. I wasn't sure how that was decided, but it probably didn't mean nothing good if you didn't. She looked up, right at me with those big fucking eyes of hers. "So you must. You- you got to." Ajran was quick with talk, which was probably bad, because she was starting to talk like me.

"What do I gotta do?"

"I will show you, if you will follow." Ajran stood, and for a second she was standing on my bed, pushed up close under a window. "This does not look very comfortable, Mildmay..." She walked into the middle of my room, and pointed toward the door. "So I can only leave through the front door."

So she'd climbed up to my window. Not really a shocker, with me sleeping in the old servant's mess and all, but, way I see it, climbing anyplace is nice work if you can get it. Anyway, we left through the front door like she said. Ajran seemed real pleased with that, which, well, if you're tracking dirt with your bare heels while you walk through the fancy gilded gates of the place Vanessa'd given me and Felix to live in-- lemme just say I could understand where she was coming from. 

Ajran, if we're being real honest here, she reminded me of a lotta kids I'd grown up with, if they'd lived long enough to be about my age-- which Ajran was-- and also fraught in a war-- which Ajran had. She didn't talk about the war, and I didn't talk about my scar, and so far we hadn't killed each other, so things was going pretty okay so far.

While we walked through the dead quiet streets of Grimglass toward the outer slums where all the Kers was stacked like little Saint Cranach dolls, I asked her a question. "Who was trying to break your nose?"

Ajran frowned, and then worked something out in her head, and nodded. "Oh, some little boys," she looked kinda bored of the whole thing, but she still said _boys_ like it was an insult, which I guess it was. Kers were a fancy word that meant the women made all the decisions. "They think I am a very easy... very easy mark." So she'd definitely picked up some talk from me. "I had a... _illuminating_ discussion with them on how they were wrong." But that sentence, she'd stolen from Felix wholesale.

"They Kers or not?" I was hoping they was Kers. We didn't need any more regular folks beating on Kers. Nobody'd got murdered yet, but I kinda got the feeling it was gonna happen soon. Just _how_ soon, that was the real question.

"Kers." Thank Kethe. "I doubt, very seriously, that anyone not a Ker could make me bleed." She took a moment to look me up and down. "No offense."

I wasn't gonna think about that too hard. "I thought you was some war hero." At least, when I talked to Kers, whenever the war came up, Ajran came up along right with it, and the other way around, too. "Why'd they try to mug you?"

"Mug?"

"Steal from."

"Ah. To mug is to steal..." Shit, at this rate, she was gonna be talking about powers and saints by Jeudy. "And- hero?" She said. "Like in your stories?"

"Yeah."

Ajran cracked her knuckles, which was definitely something she'd picked up from Kay. "I am no war hero. Just... just war." She sighed, smiling, like at some real old, real tired joke.

I wasn't really sure I wanted to know, and we was almost there, so I didn't ask. 

The Ker Slums are just like any other slums, since, you know, what makes a slum is what it don't got, not what it do. Kers really like shade, though, so there were a lot more burlap awnings than you'd find in, say, the Simside Slums, but besides that it's pretty routine. We got to Tejoran's place, which I'd never been before, but I'd guessed on account of the crowd of yucks standing around the door. They saw Ajran first, and made a hand signal that I was _pretty sure_ meant something along the lines of 'go the fuck home', but then they saw me and stopped doing it. 

Since nobody here knew who the fuck _Mildmay the Fox_ was, that was even sort of a good thing.

Inside Tejoran's place was just more people, and also Tejoran on a bed asleep with a baby in his arms. I looked over to Ajran and called her name, and a few of the people in the room laughed. I didn't know why, so I just ignored 'em. I guessed it was because I couldn't roll my 'J's like Kers do on account of my face, but Ajran looked bothered, so who fucking knew. 

I said, "What now?"

Ajran went over and picked up the baby. She kissed its little head, and held it out to me. I wanted to hold the damn thing about as much as I wanted a black eye, but sometimes you ain't got no choice, so I put Jashuki down and picked the baby up. It kicked a little, but it was so tired from being born that it didn't cry, which was all I wanted.

Ajran made a gesture with her hands that meant 'get on with it' in basically every language. I didn't know what the fuck to do, so I just did what she had, and kissed its forehead . The baby was kind of damp, but it still didn't cry, thank Kethe.

"Now is the part where you name her." 

"What?"

"Name the baby."

"I ain't f-" I looked down at the baby. "I ain't naming no baby. I don't know no Ker names."

"It does not matter." Ajran said. She tapped her temple. "What matters is getting this over _quick_."

I still didn't have any fucking idea what was going on, which I guess showed, because Ajran kept talking.

"When Tejoran wakes up, he will give the baby her speech name. You must give... a _people_ name."

I didn't know them was different, but I guess they was for Kers. Still, I'd never named nobody, and didn't know how to begin. What kinda name was good? I didn't have no time to ask what kinda name kept Ker kids outta trouble. I guess if you was born where this kid was, it might be too late already. So I just said the first girl name that popped into my damn head after the girl standing in front of me. "Methny," which was the Marathine version of Methony. 

"Good enough," Ajran said, and I couldn't tell if she was kind of disappointed or just sick to death of the whole thing. She took the baby back and gave her to Tejoran, and said "Methny," a few times until Tejoran could pronounce it proper, and then there was a bit more ceremony and we left. 

The sun was rising when we did, and I mostly just wanted to sit down and get something to eat. I was thinking about how maybe we could go to Kay's and get some breakfast there, because Felix-- who hated Ajran, if that weren't obvious by how the both of 'em acted-- wouldn't be there and Ajran could get some food, because probably she hadn't yet today or yesterday, and I was about to suggest it, when Ajran spoke up.

"Do not call me... my name..." Ajran shook her head, and I just stared, because fuck, that's what I do. "Nevermind," she said. "I do not know the words for it."

I knew a little Ker, but Ajran's Marathine was good, real good, so if she couldn't say it, I probably couldn't understand it. And maybe she was just trying to get out of finishing her sentence.

"Thank you," she said, "for helping."

I said, "ain't no skin off my back," which wasn't very nice, so I said, "I mean, you're welcome."

"I... yes." She nodded. "It _was_ important. To me and to Tejoran. I am... sorry to wake you for it."

"Sorry you got your nose bloody trying to get it done," I said, because I was.

"My nose bleeds easy. It is nothing to die over. Not eating, however..." She looked to me, and I shrugged, and we walked up to the gates of Kay's mansion.


End file.
